


Her Career (Or Mine)

by wisdomeagle



Category: Angel: the Series, Firefly
Genre: Afterlife, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Community: femslash_minis, F/F, Ghost Sex, Woke Up Gay, cosmo quiz, essentialism, the powers that suck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-19
Updated: 2007-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:54:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a ghost story (she's the haunted, haunting kind.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Career (Or Mine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alixtii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/gifts).



Thank you for taking the time to consider Afterlife for your post-death needs. Because of your experience being hijacked by a higher power you MAY ALREADY be approved for one of our semi-corporeal afterlives. Protoplasm is limited, so act now! This may be your LAST CHANCE to make a difference in the multiverse. Please list relevant experience and a list of references (preferably those who will not be shocked by otherworldly visitations) after completing this brief form, which will give us an idea of your interests and talents and help us match you with the semi-corporeal afterlife that's right for _you_.

Which afterlife activity would you MOST PREFER?  
[] Helping the helpless.  
[] Haunting the hopeless.  
[] Hunting horcruxes.  
[x] Having hot sex.

What talents, skills, and abilities will you bring to your afterlife career? (Check all that apply)  
[] Superhuman strength.  
[] Superhuman speed.  
[x] Superhuman fashion sense.  
[] Heavenly harmonies.  
[] Heavenly compassion.  
[x] Heavenly body.  
[] Flight.  
[] Forgery.  
[] Fantasy.  
[] Telekinesis.  
[x] Premonitions.  
[] Powers not otherwise specified.

Are you now, or have you ever been, a vampire?  
[x] No.  
[] Yes. (Please explain.)

Which statement best describes your relationship with the law?  
[x] I was a victim of injustice.  
[] Together, I fought crime!  
[] I frequently broke it.

How would you describe your business on earth?  
[] Unfinished.  
[] Unresolved.  
[x] Underpaid.

Which era would you prefer to haunt?  
[] The past (keep in mind that changing history is ~~strictly forbidden~~ theoretically impossible).  
[] The present (keep in mind that, for a period of not less than three years, your contact with your former acquaintances will be limited to making odd noises and muttering eerily).  
[x] The future.

Our records indicate that you have been especially  unlucky in love . To compensate, we offer you the following attractive options for your afterlife sexuality (please choose only one):  
[] Asexuality (never worry about your love life again!)  
[] Bisexuality (double your chances!)  
[] Heterosexuality (maybe it will work out this time!)  
[x] Lesbianism (and now, for something completely different!)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Cordelia has been a ghost for exactly five weeks and she's already learned something that's made her completely reevaluate her life: being a higher power is _not_ the most boring occupation in the multiverse. Not by a long shot.

She totally fell for that "being rewarded for your hard work" line, figured she'd rate at _least_ a drafty European castle, someplace elegant, someplace... hauntable. Instead? She's haunting a swamp. 

_A swamp_. She, Cordelia Chase, shopgirl, actress, secretary, supernatural detective and higher power, is _haunting a swamp_ that, as near as she can tell, has never been explored by humans or hominids, or really anyone but mosquitoes and alligators, whose ugly leers are right now the only thing preventing her from going entirely crazy. At least the alligators she can yell at. The higher-ups at Afterlife are nowhere to be summoned, and Cordelia is sick to goddamn _death_ of trying.

"Shove off," she tells the alligator that's crawled onto her log. "Come on, shove it. This is _my_ place; I earned it fair and square, and you can snuff it and haunt your own goddamned log if you're so determined to --." She's interrupted by the unexpected sound of a vehicle landing none too gracefully fifty yards away from her swamp. "Hey!" she shouts, to no effect. She's not really good at vocalizing with the semi-corporeal body. "HEY!" She waves her arms and accidentally slides through the alligator. Gross.

Meanwhile, back at the spaceship, the hatch has opened to let passengers out. They are definitely bipedal, obviously (as they head in her direction) human, and best of all, they are _not alligators_. Cordelia waves more frantically, and one of the approaching figures starts to scream. Cordelia can just make out the words "haunted" and "help" and "I won't," which she takes as a good sign. If they can sense her presence, maybe they'll try to help her -- that's what she and Angel always did with ghosts. Help them, or exorcise them if necessary, but they never left them _sitting on the goddamned log_. 

"I don't care," another voice drifts towards her. "I came here to swim and I'm staying to swim."

"Kaylee Frye, you are not swimming in _that_."

"And why not?" Kaylee crosses her arms and puts her hands on her hips to pull a pink blouse over her head.

"Because _that_ is a swamp and not fit for any human creature to swim in."

"Oh, stop, Cap'n. It's not so bad and besides, I want to. Go... go chase River or something."

If Cordelia were the captain, there is no way she'd be able to resist Kaylee's voice when it went soft and pleading like that. It's clear the actual captain can't either, and he pats her bare shoulder awkwardly before doubling back on the screamer. Kaylee half-skips towards the swamp (and Cordelia) till her bare toes squish mud, whereupon she undoes the complicated clasp keeping her bra on her chest. Which is nice. The chest. And the bra. And the braless chest.

"So," thinks Cordelia, accidentally sinking through the log into the swamp as her attention shifts from maintaining semi-corporeality to observing Kaylee's very, _very_ corporeal... corpus. "This is what it's like to be a lesbian." When she manages to get herself back above water, she decides that it's definitely preferable to asexuality, and when Kaylee kicks off her threadbare jeans and wades into the swamp wearing only a pair of men's swim trunks, which even in her inexperience Cordelia knows will be very convenient for groping, Cordelia decides it was worth dying just for this. Well, this and the assurance that her death will ultimately benefit millions of civilians, but nearly naked Kaylee is a very worthy bonus.

Or would be, if she could get her damned non-corporeal body to materialize enough so that Kaylee could see her. She struggles towards assertiveness, muttering mantras from self-help tapes now buried in LA rubble. "I am worthy of respect. I am beautiful. My soul inhabits the universe. I..."

"There someone there?" Kaylee is floating on her back in two feet of what not even an extremely generous person would call water, brackish and buggy, but there's a smile on her face that makes Cordy think Kaylee can see straight through the overhanging branches and the overcast sky and right up to heaven. 

"Boo."

Kaylee stumbles to her feet. "You can come out, you know. Nothing to be scared of but Jayne, and he's all talk."

"Who's afraid?" Cordelia says, but it sounds less unimpressive when she can't quite get her lungs to expel enough air to talk. "I _said_ , 'I'm not afraid of you.'"

"You're a ha'nt," Kaylee announces. 

"More like a haunt-in-progress."

"You come to haunt River? Cos, if you did, I might've miscalculated the amount you need to be afraid of _me_."

"Funny, because it's actually you I'm here to haunt," Cordelia tells her. 

Kaylee looks skeptical, and Cordelia can't blame her. She looks more like a homecoming queen than a ghost, and even stuck in Afterlife issue robes, she's better dressed than the freaks on the spaceship.

"What, do I need to toss around inanimate objects, have a freakishly accurate premonition? Cos I'm pretty much done with those."

"Then why're you haunting me? You're pretty and all, but if we're going to be spending time together I oughta know _why_. Unless... you didn't die in this marsh, did you? Do I need to find your body? Cos I'm squeamish around corpses."

"Cremated and sprinkled over a pond that's elsewhere. I just want to, you know, get to know you."

Kaylee examines her tactfully, says, "Oh," then, "Ohhhh," shrugs a shapely shoulder and finds her way back into jeans and blouse. Cordelia's pleased to see she doesn't bother with the bra. "We'd better get back to Serenity, then; she won't fly without me and I like to take my time with gals."

"I can't leave the swamp."

"Sure you can. You're haunting me, ain't you?"

"You think I'd still be hanging around here if it were that easy? There's got to be a spell or something that..." Kaylee's walking, and Cordelia's sort of drifting after her. Her body's just a shimmer under the noonday sun, but she's definitely moving. She rolls her eyes.

"This is my place," Kaylee says, like the sign on her door wasn't a clue. Cordelia follows her in and is surprised to discover the place is almost cozy. Not that she'd like to _live_ there, but it's not unpleasant to be dead in.

Kaylee finds a towel, threadbare but clean, with a pink heart appliquéd rather carelessly near the center. She undresses again and Cordelia doesn't know if it's the semi-corporeal body or the lesbianism, but she's not sure she can keep up even a shimmer at this rate. She wants to do absurd things to Kaylee's body, braid her hair, kiss her earlobes, touch her breasts -- she wants to be solid enough to put both hands on Kaylee's thighs and feel something like skin. She tries, but she just slides through to the bed. "Darn. This stupid body..."

Kaylee smiles. "It tickles. Go on. Do it again." Cordelia tries, breasts this time, and thinks she's making a little progress -- something like roundness cups her hand, and if she concentrates on that, on Kaylee's browned skin and tiny freckles and gooseflesh and nipple hardening as she dries off and cools down, then her hand is almost solid enough to shift the warmth of her desire into Kaylee's body, and though it hurts worse than any vision she ever had when mortal and is harder than any goodbye, she shoves hard away from herself and into Kaylee, thinking that if she doesn't manage sex, a nice possession would be a credit to her resume, and she's a body for a second, long enough to misjudge her force and knock both of them off the bed and into a stash of junk food, candied apples and chocolate mousse that's all over Kaylee's body, sticky and sweet and lickable if her tongue weren't made of protoplasm.

"This is _so_ not fair," she says upwards.

"We'll practice," Kaylee says, but the hand she offers in comfort slides through Cordelia's shoulder to the floor. "I promise it'll be worth it."


End file.
